Most Rated - Music streaming geared towards helping artists/venues

As as a musician, I see how hard it is to get any traction on traditional streaming platforms. It's hard to get someone to visit your profile, play your track, and give it time to burrow its way into your ears.

Radio tackles this by playlisting a small selection of tracks, played regularly on a loop, so if you leave the radio on all day you'll likely hear a track twice. This way even tracks you're not into at first can become catchy favourites over time.

In 2013 I set about to borrow Radio's approach and apply it to music streaming to try and address this problem, and came up with an idea to run music nights based on audience popularity. I ran gigs in London's Rhythm Factory and the Troubadour, where the 'Most Rated' artists would be invited to perform at a showcase.

I built a website using Ruby on Rails, that allowed artists to upload tracks into a database, and collated them into playlists that I fed into Icecast (streaming server), to build an internet radio station of the music. I'd sample the tracks based on factors such as how new they were; but the main weighting was how many votes listeners left, hence the 'Most Rated' artists would be played more often.

As a side hussle, it was really kinda just a hobby, and I was against the idea of monetising it. Inevitably, I went onto other projects: my band went on tour and I founded a web development training company.

It occured to me recently that even with the likes of Spotify, after all these years there still isn't a great way for new artists to get noticed, gain traction and ultimately grow as musicians. Similarly, post COVID, venues are languishing with many sadly going under or downsizing. So it seemed to me that there was still room for disruption in the music streaming space. I decided to rebuild Most Rated and am close to having an MVP again.

My initial goals are to persuade artists to join for free and upload tracks, so that I can have a ready pool of new indie music to stream. This in turn will attract and retain listeners, to whom the artists can market merch/gigs. I believe that if I can create a good music discovery experience for listeners, I have a path to growing the roster and the audience.

Once I have a quorum, I intend to extend the MVP to incorporate event listings, so that listeners can find bands who are gigging in a particular region. In this way we would provide a radio station of new music that you can see live, encouraging fans to try out new artists in their locality. If bands can see more traction for fans attending shows, I believe that this would provide considerable value over having a more passive Spotify/Bandcamp profile.

Eventually then a monetisation strategy could involve upselling on premium profiles for artists, venues and promoters, scheduling tracks for premium time slots on the playlist and even selling tickets via the platform.

Currently I am working solo on the project. As a web developer I can create the core experience and iterate on it, getting early feedback and delivering features according to what bands / listeners ask for.

Once I ship the MVP I will be looking for artists to upload music, and listeners to listen to the music and rate the tracks. It would be great to get feedback from the IH community. In the meantime, I have a page where you can register early interest so I can notify you of the launch on our website. https://mostrated.com

I'm very excited about reviving this idea and am optimistic about growing it into a viable collaborative music experience. Stay tuned!